Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates

Lists of Nobel Prizes and Laureates

The Humanitarian Nobel Peace Prizes

by Øivind
Stenersen*

From the very beginning the Norwegian Nobel
Committee chose to define humanitarian efforts as an essential
part of promoting "fraternity among nations". In awarding half of
the 1901 Peace Prize to the founder of the Red Cross, Henri Dunant, the
committee focused on a basic aspect of the word "humanitarian":
helping victims of war was classified as crucial in order to
improve the lives of mankind and reduce suffering. Ignoring the
criticism from influential people in the International Peace
Movement like Bertha
von Suttner, the Nobel Committee continued to honour the
legacy of Dunant by honouring the International Red Cross three
times: in 1917,
1944 and 1963.1 In 1963 the ICRC shared the prize with
another branch of the Red Cross family, the League of Red Cross
Societies.

From 1901 till 2003 the Nobel Peace Prize
was awarded to 111 laureates. Among them were six men, one woman
and eight different organisations that belonged to the
humanitarian category. Additionally, the prize to the 1946
Laureate, the president of the World Alliance of Young Men's
Christian Associations (YMCA), John R. Mott, was partly
motivated by humanitarian arguments. The YMCA brought relief to
millions of prisoners of war during the first and second world
wars.

Assistance for Victims of War

Assisting prisoners of war was among the
main tasks of the Norwegian polar explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen, the Nobel
Peace Laureate of 1922.2 Nansen
organised relief work during the 1921 famine in the Soviet Union,
and the following year he was appointed as the first High
Commissioner for Refugees by the League of Nations, a position in
which he used most of his energy on resettling Greeks and Turks
after the Greco-Turkish War. From 1925 Nansen worked to secure
homes for Turkish Armenians inside the Soviet Union.

The Norwegian Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht
was an influential nominator of the Nansen Office in 1936. He
hoped that a Peace Prize could help prevent the dismantling of
its activities, as proposed by the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik
government wanted to see the end of League of Nations' aid to
Russian refugees, particularly because many of them were taking
part in anti-Soviet activities.3 At
the same time, the Nobel Committee hoped that the 1938 prize
would strengthen the shattered image of the League of Nations. In
a time of crisis, many people had lost faith in the organisation
because of its inability to prevent war and create peace.
Therefore it was necessary to focus on the humanitarian work
accomplished by the Office.

During its first years, the Nansen Office
focused its aid effort on a people for whom Nansen had had
particular concern: the Armenians. The Nansen Office organised
the construction of villages to house more than 40,000 Armenians
in Syria and Lebanon and resettled another 10,000 in Erivan in
the Soviet Union. In the middle of the 1930s it handled refugee
cases mostly from France, Syria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Germany and
Bulgaria. Others were from Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Romania,
Switzerland and China. A wide range of relief measures were
implemented: office representatives issued documents of
identification for stateless refugees ("Nansen passports"),
arranged visas and appealed expulsions. They also handled
tax-issues, procured housing and employment, gave loans to
tradesmen, traced missing persons and helped supply food and
medicine to the sick and the elderly. In 1933, the organisation
was a driving force in hammering out the Refugee Convention of
the League of Nations. Governments that signed were obliged not
to expel refugees as long as they did not represent a threat to
national security or to the general public order.

To the satisfaction of the Nobel Committee,
the tasks of the Nansen Office were carried on by a new agency,
the Office of the High Commission for Refugees under the
Protection of the League. It opened in 1939 with headquarters in
London.

In 1955, the reserved Peace Prize from 1954
was awarded to the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR was
established by the UN General Assembly in 1950 and made
responsible for ensuring that all refugees receive international
protection in accordance with the Convention Relating to the
Status of Refugees adopted in 1951. According to this convention,
a refugee was defined as an individual forced to leave his or her
home country for fear of persecution on racial, religious,
political or nationality grounds or for belonging to a particular
group in society. All signatory states were committed to issuing
identity documents to refugees and to not return people who were
in danger of undue suffering in their home country. It also
determined that refugees were to be guaranteed international
protection under law and granted fundamental rights in the host
country.

In the first half of the 1950s, the UNHCR
sought solutions to the refugee problem by means of voluntary
repatriation, emigration or integration in the country of asylum.
Particular attention was focused on the plight of refugees within
Europe. In 1955, European refugees comprised nearly half of the
2.2 million people under the protection of the UNHCR. Of these,
some 70,000 were living in approximately 200 camps in West
Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece. Large refugee groups were
also found in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran.

When the UNHCR was founded, it was decided
that the UN would cover its administrative expenses, but that
specific measures in the field would have to be financed and
carried out by governments or governmental and non-governmental
organisations. It soon became clear that it would be difficult to
procure sufficient funding from the member countries by voluntary
means, and in 1955 the organisation was faced with a financial
crisis. In awarding the Peace Prize to the UNHCR, the Nobel
Committee sought to bring the problem of refugees into the
international limelight and thus promote an increase in the
volume of voluntary financial support to the organisation.

When the Nobel Committee awarded the prize
to the UNHCR for the
second time, in 1981, the refugee problem remained unsolved
and had grown even larger. In the early 1980s, the problem was
largely confined to the Third World, particularly the countries
of Africa. The dramatic situation of the Vietnamese boat refugees
was also the focus of international attention during this
period.

The decision to use the prize money to set
up a separate fund for disabled refugees was met with favour. It
provided an opportunity for the High Commissioner to mark the
year 1981 as the International Year of Disabled Persons, and was
also a result of UNHCR's desire to strike a blow for the most
vulnerable of refugees: individuals suffering from physical and
psychological trauma following acts of war; the mentally ill, the
elderly and the sick.

In accordance with the conviction that the
will of God could be revealed in silent contemplation by every
human being, the Quakers developed a special kind of Christian
pacifism. Quaker pacifism meant that "the Light of Christ" should
be transformed into positive action by individuals, families,
social groups, races and nations; thus creating an atmosphere of
peace that would make wars impossible. In the 1760s William Penn
tried to realize this policy of good deeds in the colony of
Pennsylvania in North America, setting an example for a disarmed
state.

The Quakers were not only pioneers in their
call for European political unity and ecumenical cooperation
between Christians. They also took up an early engagement fight
against intolerance and social injustice which were looked upon
as major roots of war; an attitude which explains the broad and
industrious Quaker engagement for social and political reforms.
In order to establish peace among nations it was necessary to
create social harmony within the borders of every nation. Quakers
were pioneers in the field of education and played an active role
in reforming prisons and mental institutions. They were also in
the frontline in the struggle against slavery and in the fight
for women's rights. In the early nineteenth century they helped
found the first peace societies, and after that Quakers were
instrumental in the development of the modern peace movement.

During the Second World War, the Friends
launched a humanitarian operation much like that seen during the
previous Great War. In Britain they introduced welfare
initiatives in bomb-stricken areas, such as food supplies,
equipment and personnel for bomb shelters, and assisted civilians
fleeing the cities. In the United States the Quakers were
particularly concerned about the plight of Japanese-Americans,
who were sent to internment camps from 1941. The Friends
ambulance service was again successfully deployed with a number
of frontline divisions.

When the war ended in 1945, the Quakers
were quick to take part in the reconstruction process. Large
quantities of clothing and food supplies were shipped to the
Continent, and vulnerable groups – concentration camp
prisoners, slave labourers and scores of German refugees from
Eastern Europe – were at the centre of attention. The
Quakers set up schools in the refugee camps, distributed food and
opened summer camps and "democratic" youth clubs. Apart from
Germany, relief work was carried out in France, Austria and
Greece, but it also reached the burnt-out regions of Northern
Norway.

During the award ceremony in 1947 an
American Quaker described their contribution in the following
way: "This international service is not mere humanitarianism; it
is not merely mopping up, cleaning up the world after war. It is
aimed at creating peace by setting an example of a different way
of international service. So our foreign relief is a means of
rehabilitation and it is intended not merely to help the body but
to help the spirit and to give men hope that there can be a
peaceful world." The chairman of the Nobel Committee agreed by
citing some lines of a Norwegian poem: "The unarmed only can draw
on sources eternal. The spirit alone gives victory."

Already as a student, the theologian,
distinguished organist and doctor of medicine Albert Schweitzer decided to
dedicate his life to humanitarian work. In 1904 the young
Alsatian came across an article calling for qualified people for
the French Missionary Company in the Congo. Schweitzer followed
the appeal and started planning the building of a hospital in
Africa. Through concerts and donations, he obtained sufficient
funds to set off – accompanied by his wife - for the
village of Lambaréné on the Ogowo River in French
Equatorial Africa in 1913. Concentrating on developing bonds of
trust between the hospital and the local population, he treated
thousands of people suffering from severe illnesses like malaria,
sleeping sickness, skin sores, leprosy, dysentery, venereal
diseases, hernia and heart failure. Apart from occasional
fund-raising visits to Europe, he continued his medical work in
Africa for the rest of his life.

When Schweitzer received the reserved Peace
Prize for 1952, the Nobel Committee especially appreciated his
cultural philosophy, "Reverence for Life", which served as an
ethical principle for his humanitarian efforts. In his view the
individual must constantly look beyond all that knowledge and
science have created and penetrate to the elementary: The free
human being seeks the joy of being allowed to care for life and
avert suffering and destruction.

In the 1950s, many looked upon Schweitzer
as a kind of earthly saint, and he received a unique welcome when
he held his Nobel Lecture in 1954. More than 20,000 torchbearers
greeted him in front of the Oslo City Hall, and a spontaneous
fundraiser during his visit resulted in almost twice the amount
of the Peace Prize.

Later critics have characterized him as a
remnant of European cultural paternalism. Some have even
suggested that Lambaréné offered Schweitzer an escape
from the serious social and political problems of Europe; but in
a fifty years' perspective, such criticism seems out of
proportion. In 1957, Schweitzer broke his silence and issued a
statement against nuclear testing. His public appeal was
broadcast in different languages from Oslo in cooperation with
the chairman of the Nobel Committee.

In 1958, the Belgian Dominican priest
Georges Pire
received the Peace Prize primarily for his humanitarian work on
behalf of European refugees. He organised a network of sponsors
who sent parcels, letters of encouragement, clothing, food and
medicine to refugees living in camps, and established a
donation-based aid organisation that built homes for elderly
refugees. Pire also utilised private donations to build several
"European Villages", each a miniature community consisting of
small buildings with room for about 100 refugees. These villages
were designed to give the refugees a chance to gain economic
independence, and residents paid half of the rent.

A driving force behind Pire's activities
was his desire to serve the vision of European unity through
humanitarian efforts. Several people in the European Movement
supported his Peace Prize nomination as did the Norwegian
ambassador in Brussels. Father Pire's work was, however, never
Eurocentric. In 1957, he and his closest associates created the
organisation "L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde", whose task
it was to organise relief efforts in other parts of the world.
The Nobel Committee found that Pire appealed "to all that is best
in the Western European" and highlighted his desire "to erect a
bridge of light and love high above the waves of colonialism,
anti-colonialism and racial strife". Such visions were clearly in
line with the idea of fraternity as expressed in Alfred Nobel's
will.

In the 1960s, Pire concentrated his
activities more and more on global efforts. He spearheaded the
creation of a Belgian peace university, which organised summer
courses for "fraternal dialogue" between peoples of different
cultural backgrounds and continents. Pire also initiated
development programmes in Pakistan and India. The projects,
called "Islands of Peace", promoted local cooperation between
villages to improve the health and nutrition conditions with the
aid of western expertise.4

Like John D. Mott and Georges Pire, the
Laureate of 1979 Mother Teresa, said she
was called by God to engage in Christian charity. The Roman
Catholic nun of Albanian descent devoted her life to working
among "the poorest of the poorest" in the slums of Calcutta. In
1950, she received permission from the Vatican to found an order,
the "Missionaries of Charity". By 1979, the order comprised 1,400
sisters and brothers in India, who ran 30 homes for orphaned
newborns, 70 leper colonies and a number of homes for the
terminally ill. In addition, the order had spread to and was
carrying out relief work in Peru, USA (New York), Tanzania,
Ethiopia, Israel and Yemen.

Mother Teresa was, however, viewed with
scepticism in certain circles. Her tireless battle against
divorce, birth control and abortion made her a conservative
defender of the values promoted by the Vatican. Her organisation
was blamed for spending millions on convents instead of building
hospitals and for the fact that the homes for the dying lacked
adequate medical equipment. At the same time, mother Teresa
herself received the best treatment for heart problems in a
clinic in the United States.

But such negative reactions had little
effect on the popular support for "the Saint of the Gutter". She
was met with enthusiasm and a "People's Peace Prize" when she
came to Norway in 1979, requesting that the customary Nobel
banquet should be called off. The Nobel Committee accepted the
wish and gave her a cheque to "feed those who really needed a
decent meal."

After Mother Teresa's death, strong forces
inside the Catholic Church started the process of making her a
saint. In 2002 the Pope signed a decree accepting as authentic a
miracle attributed to the nun, and the next year the ceremony of
beatification, which is one step short of canonisation, took
place in Rome.

Food Supply and Children's Welfare

In the 1930s, the British nutritionist
John Boyd Orr
became deeply involved in efforts to improve living conditions
for the people of Britain, playing a key role in the
government-appointed national committee on nutrition. He went on
to become one of the founding fathers, and thereafter the first
director-general of, the United Nations Food and Agriculture
organisation (FAO), established in November 1945 as the first
specialised agency of the United Nations. It was his
outstanding performance in these positions that made him worthy
of the 1949 Nobel Peace Prize.

Boyd Orr focused his efforts on solving the
post-war food crisis, which he considered to be the most
immediate problem facing FAO. He set up the International
Emergency Food Council, which, according to Boyd Orr himself,
saved "millions of lives from death and starvation" in the three
years it existed. Boyd Orr further proposed the establishment of
a World Food Board, which would be equipped with executive powers
to stabilize food prices on the global market. However, his
proposal did not receive the support of the United States and the
United Kingdom, and an agency with less authority, the World Food
Council, was established instead. In response, Boyd Orr resigned
as director-general of FAO.

Boyd Orr saw his work for better nutrition
in a wider context, which was highly appreciated by the Nobel
Committee. In 1945 he served as president for the National Peace
Council, whose membership comprised 50 British peace
organisations. In addition, he was deeply committed to the
movement to institute world government: The World Federalist
Association.

In 1965, the Peace Prize went to the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which was founded by the UN
General Assembly in 1946. The chief architects behind the
organisation were former United States president Herbert Hoover,
the last United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
(UNRRA) president, Fiorello la Guardia and the Polish diplomat
Ludwik Rajchman. Up to the early 1950s, UNICEF focused mostly on
providing food, clothing and medicine to children and mothers in
war-ravaged Europe, China and Palestine.

In 1953, the UN General Assembly decided to
set up UNICEF as its permanent child-aid organisation, with
long-term objectives aimed at work in the developing countries.
The organisation gave priority to three main areas. The first was
to implement programs for maternal and child health care. The
second was to educate people about nutrition and to distribute
protein-rich foods. The third was to combat diseases that
destroyed the health or claimed the lives of millions of children
each year. As part of these efforts, UNICEF built thousands of
health clinics throughout the Third World.

The 1959, UN Declaration of the Rights of
the Child served to strengthen the basis for UNICEF's activities.
The declaration stated that all children have the right to
security, adequate nutrition, housing, education and protection
against "all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation". In the
1960s, UNICEF began to give priority to educational programmes,
in close cooperation with other UN organisations.

The Nobel Committee described UNICEF as "an
international device capable of tackling the giant task of
liberating the children of the developing countries – who
are all of them our joint responsibility – from ignorance,
disease, malnutrition, and starvation". In the view of the
committee, these efforts represented "a great step forward in the
idea of international cooperation".

In 1970, the question of "bread and peace"
was put on the Nobel peace agenda once again when the American
scientist, Norman
Borlaug, won the Peace Prize. The Iowa-born expert in
genetics is known as the man behind the "Green Revolution" of the
1960s, which brought about vastly increased grain yields, first
in Mexico, then in India and Pakistan.

The Nobel Committee related Borlaug's
achievement to the basic human right of freedom from starvation
as recognised by the Charter of the United Nations and declared
that his work had helped to turn pessimism into optimism in the
dramatic race between population explosion and food production.
By exploiting the new technology in agriculture, other branches
of the economies in the developing countries could be modernised
in the same way as the western European societies during the
Industrial Revolution.

In his Nobel Lecture, Borlaug underlined
that adequate food is the moral right of all mankind and that
peace can't be built on empty stomachs. The increase in grain
production was only a temporary success in the war against hunger
because the frightening power of human reproduction could ruin
all progress. At the same time he criticised both rich and poor
countries that used vast sums on arms instead of on research and
education designed to sustain and humanize life. Unless the
hungry half of the world population was secured employment,
comfortable housing, good clothing and effective medical care,
man might degenerate sooner from environmental diseases than from
hunger.

Still the laureate was optimistic about the
future since man is a rational being: By 1990 he hoped that man
would have recognised the self-destructive course of
irresponsible population growth and adjusted the growth rate to
levels which would permit a decent standard of living for all
mankind.

History has proved that Borlaug's optimism
was too strong. Thirty years after his Nobel Lecture, he repeated
his warning from 1970 that unless the frightening power of human
reproduction was curbed, the success of the Green Revolution
would only be ephemeral. But again solutions were available: At
the turn of the century the world had the technology to feed on a
sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more
pertinent question was whether farmers would be permitted to use
the high–yielding crop production methods as well as the
last biotechnological breakthroughs.5

Medical Aid and Human Rights

In 1999, the final Peace Prize of the 20th
century was awarded to the independent emergency relief
organisation Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) which was founded as a result of
experiences made by a group of French doctors during the Biafra
conflict in the late 1960s.

In their service they had found it
difficult to remain silent and neutral in the civil war as
required by Red Cross statutes. Among them was the physician
Bernhard Kouchner. In 1970, he started a new and flexible
organisation whose aid workers could enter a conflict area
illegally if necessary in order to help all victims and at the
same time tell the world about violations of human rights.

In recognising MSF the Nobel Committee
highlighted the willingness to send volunteers quickly to scenes
of disaster, regardless of the political situation, and it
praised the group for drawing the world's attention to the causes
of catastrophes, which could help to engage public opinion
against oppressive regimes.

In the 1970s, MSF was dominated by French personnel and
engaged in relief operations in Nicaragua, Vietnam, Lebanon and
Turkey. After an internal dispute in 1979 about the rescue of
Vietnamese boat people adrift in the China Sea, Kouchner broke
out and the organisation was consolidated. In the next decade
local branches were opened in new countries and French doctors
were outnumbered by volunteers from other nations. A successful
fund raiser in 1982 and financial support from the UN, the
European Union and some governments secured MSF a more stable
income.

In 1985, the organisation was banned from Ethiopia for saying
the government had diverted aid and forced migration. Ten years
later, MSF was among the first to call the massacre in Rwanda
genocide, and it withdrew from refugee camps in Zaire and
Tanzania controlled by Hutu leaders responsible for serious
violations. In 1999, the chairman of the Nobel Committee drew
special attention to the group's commitment to Africa, because
the misery there often fades from public consciousness.

At the end of the 1990s, MSF sent out 2,500 physicians and
relief workers to areas stricken by conflict or disaster. In
addition, the organisation had 15,000 local personnel in more
than 80 countries, conducted a total of 6 million consultations
annually and performed 200,000 surgical operations.

But still some aid agencies scorned MSF for
its intimate relationship with the news media and its sometimes
glamorous images of attractive young doctors in action. Such
analyses were categorically dismissed by the organisation, and
its founder Bernard Kouchner insisted that speaking out about
atrocities would help prevent them. "It is very important that
MSF does not offer shelter for disgraceful acts and suffering. We
need to convince people that the suffering of one man was the
responsibility of all men. This work is not done, far from
it."

The same attitude was clearly demonstrated
during the award ceremony in December 1999 when MSF members wore
t-shirts with slogans against the Russian warfare in Chechnya.
Such action was unprecedented in the history of the Nobel Peace
Prize.

Humanitarian Efforts and Peace-Building

Finally, let us sum up some of the main
arguments used by the Nobel Committee to motivate the
humanitarian prizes. Repeatedly, it has chosen human symbols,
people who through their good deeds can serve as examples for
contemporary and future generations. According to the Committee,
these "champions of brotherly love" or "self-sacrificing" men and
women served the cause of peace by holding out a helping hand to
victims of armed conflicts, like prisoners of war and
refugees.

The wish to heal the wounds of war was in
itself an important factor in the deliberations. The Committee
strongly believed that bitterness and calls for revenge could be
reduced by humanitarian aid. It also favoured people and
organisations striving for the principle that humanitarian rights
should be codified by international conventions. This meant a
steady support to aid organisations of the United Nations and a
growing challenge to the principle of non-intervention.

The goal of narrowing the gap between rich
and poor nations and the wish to strengthen human rights in the
developing countries were other leading principles for the Nobel
Committee. In this regard scientists and organisations dedicated
to the task of tackling and overcoming economic and social
privation were particularly relevant. Again and again the
Committee stressed that we all have a global responsibility and
that the proud tradition of humanitarianism must be put on the
agenda of world politics.

* Øivind Stenersen
(1946-) obtained his cand. philol. in History at the University
of Oslo in 1972. He has more than twenty years of experience as
teacher in senior secondary schools and has taught and acted as
examiner at universities and colleges. Since 1983, he has written
textbooks in history for primary and secondary school levels.
Stenersen is also co-author of the books The History of
Norway from the Ice Age to Today and The Nobel Peace
Prize. One Hundred Years for Peace. From 1999-2001 he was
Nobel Institute Fellow and is currently working as Project
Advisor at The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.